Land mines’ mayhem abates

TRAPEANG VENG, Cambodia – More than 8,000 people were killed or maimed last year by land mines, although an international treaty that banned the weapons five years ago has reduced the carnage, an activist group said Wednesday.

Up to 20,000 more people may have fallen victim to land mines during the period because so many cases go unreported, but even that was an improvement on annual estimates before the 1999 treaty, officials from the International Campaign to Ban Landmines said.

Countries increasingly are shunning land mines since the Mine Ban Treaty took effect in 1999, but the United States, China and Russia are among those that haven’t joined and still stockpile millions of the devices, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group said.

Since the treaty, the 143 countries that signed it have destroyed more than 62 million stockpiled mines and cleared more than 425 square miles of land of the weapons, the group said in a global report reviewing the progress made in the last five years.

Only Myanmar and Russia have continuously used mines since 1999, the campaign said.

“The international norm established by the … treaty is rapidly taking firm hold around the world,” said Jody Williams, who shared the 1997 Nobel prize with the group she helped create. “If we continue to work together, we will see a world where there are no mines and no new victims.”

But more countries should ratify the treaty and governments should provide more aid to victims, she said.

The land mine campaign is a collective of the rights groups Human Rights Watch, Handicap International, Kenya Coalition Against Landmines, Norwegian People’s Aid and Mines Action Canada.

The report said 65 countries had completely destroyed their land mine stockpiles since signing on to the treaty, although 42 countries still have about 180 million mines. China, Russia and the United States hold the largest stockpiles, the report said.

“We are winning the war against anti-personnel mines,” said Stephen Goose of Human Rights Watch, the chief editor of the report. “Astonishing progress has been made over the past five years,” he told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Aid groups estimate that about 26,000 people were killed or injured by land mines each year in the 1990s, although there is no official count. Sheree Bailey, of Handicap International in Cambodia, said unconfirmed casualties were estimated to be about 20,000 in 2003.

The report says 8,065 new land mine casualties were reported in 2003, down somewhat from 8,333 in 2002. Afghanistan, Cambodia and Bosnia-Herzegovina showed the most improvement.

Bailey said the decline was heartening, but noted that most of the estimated 400,000 people worldwide who were living with land mine injuries are in poor countries that often can’t afford to care for them properly.

“The majority of mine survivors need assistance for their lifetime,” she said. “It’s not just a matter of patching someone up and sending them back out.”